


Learning

by My_Beating_Hart



Series: A Mahariel's Awakening [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Gen, Gen Work, Illiteracy, Learning to write, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-20 03:58:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4772675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Beating_Hart/pseuds/My_Beating_Hart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t exactly well known in the keep that Theron was unable to write. The Seneschal obviously knew, as did Mistress Woolsey, and perhaps Oghren had pieced together the very few clues. But for the most part, the keep and the various nobles he was corresponding with had no idea that the Warden-Commander of Ferelden had never picked up a quill in his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning

**Author's Note:**

> This is a scene from the larger Awakening series that I was too eager to wait and write in order. So, very mild spoilers and I've tried to keep the setting of this piece in Awakening's timeline vague. This will most likely be slotted into the Awakening series when I've written the needed parts and then deleted. It'll be a while until it's deleted, though, so don't worry about this suddenly disappearing.

“That will be all for today, Sara.” Theron eventually said when the words on the letter he was reading stopped registering in his mind, and the silence in the room had stretched on for longer than normal.

“Very good, ser.” She replied, setting down the quill she’d been using to transcribe his responses into neatly written, official correspondences with the various banns and Arls that demanded his attention day after day. The scribe tucked away the thin sheet of wood she carried around for a desk, and left the study. Theron sat behind the desk for a few minutes longer, staring down at the letters until his vision blurred.

With a tired sigh, he stopped examining the neat penmanship, and began to gather up the letters into two relatively ordered piles - letters he’d answered and that would be burnt, and letters that would have to wait until tomorrow to be answered. Looking at the latter pile, it seemed to be nearly twice the height as the other.

“Tomorrow.” He reassured himself, picking up the letters and opening a desk drawer to hide them in for another night. The Dalish elf paused when he saw the drawer was full of spare, blank paper, and then looked at the quill and ink Sara had left behind, as she always did. It wasn’t like he’d ever been very interested in them before. But tonight Theron found himself fascinated by the letters that others found so easy to write, the flowing lines of cursive that he knew belonged to Zevran long before the flourish of ink that ended the Antivan’s letters.

It wasn’t exactly well known in the keep that Theron was unable to write. The Seneschal obviously knew, as did Mistress Woolsey, and perhaps Oghren had pieced together the very few clues. But for the most part, the keep and the various nobles he was corresponding with had no idea that the Warden-Commander of Ferelden had never picked up a quill in his life. One of the few stereotypes regarding the Dalish that was definitely true.

The Dalish often scratched marks into dirt or tree bark - hunting plans, scouting maps to find a new campsite, signs for other clans passing through an area that warned of human ambushes, a bear den up ahead or trees that would fall one day - the exact meanings or symbols used differed slightly around the Brecilian, but there was never a large difference. Markings that weren’t quite pictures, but certainly weren’t words either, that conveyed specific meanings. He’d never needed to read or write when he’d lived with his clan, but thanks to the efforts of the more educated members of the group during the Blight, he could at least read well enough. Was writing any more difficult to master? 

Theron sighed, knowing one thing - he would keep this a secret. Having to set aside time every day to be taught how to write when he was already so busy would mean his other obligations would suffer. He grimaced at the idea of the pile of unanswered letters growing further, or of word spreading. The Arls would be outraged, no doubt - _We have an illiterate Dalish elf leading the Wardens and in charge of an entire arling? What was Queen Anora thinking?_ No, it would save time and embarrassment if he taught himself, worked at his own pace, with no-one else the wiser. Not even Varel, who had grown to be his confidant since those first early days. _  
_

The ranger came to an abrupt decision then, swapping the letters for a few sheets of paper and reaching for the writing supplies. The first puzzle was figuring out how to hold the quill correctly. How did Sara hold it? It wasn’t between her fingers and thumb, but it was something close to that. Theron frowned down at the quill in concentration as he awkwardly tried to mimic the positioning of Sara’s hand whenever she held the quill; he’d watched her often enough, surely? His fingers were dexterous from a lifetime of archery, but callused, scarred and uncertain of the new task they were being used for. Somewhat clumsily, he managed to hold the quill between his index and middle finger the way he’d seen others hold a quill, thumb keeping the ink-damp nib pointed down. That was how a quill was held, right?

Theron let out a bitter bark of laughter at his own question, letting the quill slide from his fingers onto the desk. What was he _doing_ , trying to learn how to write? He had a scribe, there was no need for him to learn now or ever. But there were so many times where he’d been handed a piece of paper to sign, and as many times when he’d pretended to be too busy to do so, often telling the unwitting ambassador or whoever asked for his signature to go over the details with Varel or Mistress Woolsey. They often signed in his stead, but Theron couldn’t shake the feeling that everyone expected him to be able to write despite his upbringing, because he was surrounded by others who knew their letters and how to copy them out. He couldn’t. The Warden-Commander of Ferelden was illiterate.

Looking at the pile of letters sitting in the drawer like some kind of incriminating evidence, it felt like the nobles who’d signed every letter with a neat, practiced signature were silently judging him for sitting there and dictating his responses to a scribe.

“What do you know?” He muttered to the watching letters, pushing the drawer firmly shut and trying to ignore the bright curl of shame that woke in his stomach. The quill rocked slightly from side to side at the movement, creating a thin line of black ink across one corner of the blank paper it now lay on.

Oh, he already knew that he would pick the damned pointy feather up again, had been ever since he saw the blank paper and realised his opportunity. It was a foregone conclusion, really. He’d already had his Dalish stubbornness pointed out to him several times by Zevran alone, as if he wasn’t already aware of it.

He would pick up the quill, and figure out how to write his letters as well he could read them, this time entirely by himself. He'd teach himself how to do it. Sara didn’t have to know. Even Varel didn’t have to know. Theron sighed wearily, running a hand over his braids in mild frustration as he stared down at the quill and the black ink that coated the metal nib that was as sharp as an arrowhead. Like an arrow, in the right hands trained to use it, this could be a weapon, a tool, as well. He could almost feel his resolve crumbling even before he reached for the quill.

It dug into his fingers as he gripped it tightly, not wanting it to fall out of his grasp again. The Dalish elf looked down at the blank paper.

“Now, how does everyone else do it?” He muttered aloud, tapping the nib against the paper curiously and examining the small black dots the action created. Carefully, Theron lowered the quill again and dragged the nib across the paper, watching the black line that appeared in the nib’s wake. He was startled when the paper suddenly tore; he must have pressed down too hard with the quill.

Theron set the quill down carefully, looking at the slowly drying ink that was interrupted by the new hole punched through the paper and a blotch of black. Was that all they did to write? His brows creased in thought, but when he picked the quill up again he felt a little more confident.

This time he varied the pressure of the lines he scratched into the paper, pleased at how thin he could make the lines by all but removing the nib from the page, and how others petered off into nothingness when he did remove the quill mid-line. How drops of ink soaked into the paper like water into the earth, a black circle spreading wider. Figuring out how to use the inkwell was even easier - he’d seen the way Sara often dipped her quill into it. She didn’t make it seem as messy as it was, and there was at least one point where he nearly managed to upset the inkwell and tip it over. Soon the pieces of paper were covered in a chaotic mess of black patches and lines, some boldly curving on themselves or looping entirely, shaky and clumsy but unmistakably there. It was a good start. Theron eventually stopped for the night, setting the quill and inkwell back exactly where he’d found them before he added the practice sheets to the pile of letters to be burned, tucked away near the bottom rather than on top for anyone to see.

Theron was surprised to see black smudges on his fingers, but quickly washed his hands clean of the evidence - as well as his face, just in case there were smudges on other visible places that he wasn’t able to see.

After that, he tossed the letters onto the study fire and left the room, padding off to his own bedroom for the night.

 

The next morning Theron found himself in the study before his scribe; she looked surprised when she entered and saw him at his desk already, letters scattered around and the replies buzzing around in his mind impatiently. The sooner they finished the pile of letters and any more that arrived, the sooner he would be able to continue practicing his letters in privacy.

The day’s work passed quickly, responses were written out in neat cursive and the letters gradually moved from one pile to the other. Theron paid close attention to the way Sara’s quill moved across the paper, his keen tracker’s gaze absorbing every tiny detail. Eventually, they bid each other goodnight and Theron was left alone in the study again, aside from the drawerful of blank paper and the writing supplies he’d hidden away in an unused bottom drawer.

The lines flowed a little smoother tonight, the nib didn’t scratch quite as harshly over the paper when the ink began to run out, and more of the lines curled in wide, aimless loops. He was getting used to gripping the quill between his fingers and to resting his free hand on the paper so it stayed still.

Another night was spent making loops and lines, teaching his hand how to hold the quill without accidentally dropping it after five minutes and how to make childish scrawls that filled the pages before he set his sights on figuring out how to copy letters and words. That would be another day, perhaps tomorrow.

As before, when he grew too tired to keep going for one night Theron tossed the practice sheets into the fire along with the answered letters and hid the rest of the evidence.

 

The next evening, Theron eagerly dug the writing supplies out again, something of a plan in his mind. He’d kept watching Sara as she wrote, and had stared at enough letters. This time, rather than ignore the pile of answered letters on the edge of his desk, Theron drew one or two of them back to where he sat, above the blank paper he would be using today.

He stared at the flowing cursive again, quill poised in one hand.

 _Dear Warden-Commander_ , the letter started, as most of them did. Theron dipped the quill into his inkwell, and put nib to paper. Staring intently at the first letter, he slowly began to copy it out. One short line, and then a curve that joined the two ends. Deceptively simple. Looking at the mark he’d made, it looked almost like a strung shortbow.

It was a shaky start despite how he’d worked on the lines for the past few nights, far larger than the ‘D’ on the letter he’d just copied. It looked much cruder as well, nowhere near as elegant as he’d hoped. Like a child had written it, not someone entering their twenty-fifth winter.

Theron frowned at the mark, but tried again next to it even more carefully, this time trying to keep the movement of his hand and fingers more concise. The result was better, to his eyes. Another ‘D’, smaller than the first and not quite as shaky. He smiled, and tried again, and again, and again. The letter shrank a little more with every repetition, grew closer in size to the cursive he was mimicking. He kept going after that until the letter was little more than a dot on the paper, the last in a tapering line that spanned the top of the page.

Theron smiled to himself again, and then focused on the rest of the word. ‘Dear’. He remembered Alistair patiently - painstakingly - teaching him the difference between ‘dear’ and ‘deer’ despite how they sounded identical, and how letters often started with ‘dear’ because it was only polite, and they weren’t referring to the sort of deer he was used to hunting, or calling someone a deer.

“Strange.” The Dalish elf muttered to himself in the quiet of the room, before he replenished the ink and tried on a new line. The small ‘e’ was simple enough, a spiral movement, even if it wasn’t as refined. Theron repeated it a few more times, until the nib flowed over rather than scratched the paper. After a moment’s contemplation, he added the bigger ‘E’ - four straight lines that were even simpler than the ‘D’.

The ‘a’ next. After studying the letter again, Theron drew a circle - an ‘o’, he recalled - and added a short line to the right. He grimaced at how odd it looked in comparison to the letter, and tried again. ‘a’ ‘a’ ‘a’. Better with every one he wrote, but so far off the neat penmanship of human nobility. Then again, they’d probably learnt how to write as soon as they were able to hold a quill. It was expected of them. ‘a’ ‘a’. ‘A’ ‘A’ ‘A’. It looked like an arrow head. He paused, and added a fourth line to make the final ‘A’ into a proper arrowhead, a small spray of lines on either side of the other end of the line making the fletching.

Theron huffed at his doodle, and moved onto the final letter. ‘r’. ‘R’.

“Ruh.” He mumbled under his breath as he traced the letter. Another straight line pointing downwards, with a tiny flick of a curl added on. The Dalish elf looked at it thoughtfully, and then squinted at the cursive ‘r’ for guidance. It didn’t look like the writer had lifted their quill up from the page to make it. Theron tried again, first trying to write the curve first and work backwards into the straight line. After a few messy scrawls that looked… Passingly similar to an ‘r’, he marked the line first and then moved the quill back up over the freshly made line to the curve.

“Is that it?” He asked the study hopefully, comparing his handiwork to the original. A few more goes, and it seemed to be so. ‘r’ ‘r’ ‘r’. ‘R’ was more difficult, one he had to search through the letters to find a good example he could copy out rather than work from memory. A straight line, something he excelled at by now. A curved line similar to the ‘D’, but which stopped halfway down the line. He could have left it there, and made it a ‘P’, but he added the final slanted line. ‘R’.

“Ruh. Rrr.” Theron muttered, remembering how Zevran always rolled his r’s due to his accent. The ranger paused, wishing that he could hear Zevran’s voice again rather than imagine it as he read the blond’s letters. “ _Lath_.” He sighed, before he shook his head and went back to writing.

‘D’ ‘e’ ‘a’ ‘r’. On another fresh line over halfway down the page, Theron wrote the letters out again, one after another. The room was silent as he concentrated, aside the the slow scratch of the quill on paper. ‘D’ ‘e’ ‘a’ ‘r’. Closer. ‘D e a r’. Even closer. The letters touched in the cursive example he was using, were joined in flowing script. Shouldn’t his own? ‘Dear’, the curves and lines brushing each other. Alright, he had no idea how to connect the letters together. The ink seemed to flow from one letter to the other in a single decisive unbroken sweep. ‘Dear’. His own quill, his fingers, moved slowly to shape each letter with care.

Theron lifted the quill from the page, and left it in the inkwell as he examined the word - his first written word. He couldn’t help the satisfied smile on his face, or the feeling of pride in his chest. He’d taught himself to write something. _Dear_. It was good progress.

This time, he didn’t burn the practise sheet. Instead, he hid it away with the rest of his things.

 

As days turned to weeks, Theron managed to teach himself how to write the rest of the alphabet - big capital and small lowercase letters both. Aside from some confusion between similar letters such as ‘Q’ and ‘O’, why some letters had tails and others didn’t, and some letters that didn’t change anything but size when they became capitals - such as ‘O’ again, his determined self-teaching ran smoothly. He poured over letters for more examples, studying the penmanship of different nobles or Arls. He even saved some particular letters, to see if there was any variation from letter to letter sent by the same person.

There were sheets of paper with the repetitive pattern of the alphabet laboriously copied out over and over on both sides, saved as well in a bottom drawer. When the quill finally broke one evening and sprayed ink over the page he'd been working on, Theron had no choice but to stop writing for the night (and, naturally, hunt around the study the next morning for where the spare quills were kept before Sara arrived).

Attempts were made to copy the flowing cursive script that most nobles used, but it simply didn’t come naturally to Theron’s less refined hand. Rather than grow frustrated with the repeated failed attempts, he decided to focus on simply writing the words out, on stringing the letters together in seemingly endless combinations until they resembled any number of the words he’d read and learnt. He still liked how cursive writing looked, even if he didn’t know how it was done.

 _Dear_ had improved quickly, looked and felt smoother on the page. It was soon joined by _Warden Commander_ , even if at first the ‘m’s had a few more curves than they were supposed to have, or the ‘n’ became an ‘m’. _Comma ~~m~~ **n** der. Dear Warden Commander_. A mix of big and small letters that at first irritated him.

Next, he tried his own name, picking out the letter sounds, and then the letters themselves, the same way he'd learnt how to read it from the marks Leliana scratched into the dirt around the campfire.

“Theron. T-H-E-R-O-N.” He often muttered to himself as he sat hunched over the latest sheet of paper in the soft candlelight, his writing once again slow and careful with the unfamiliar word he was determined to get right in as few repetitions as he could manage.

 _Theron_. There it was. His own name, written by his own hand. The Dalish elf tilted his head thoughtfully, dipping the quill in the inkwell again, and he tried again a little further down the page.

 _I am Theron_. He wrote carefully.

“Mah-ha-ree-el.” He added softly as he kept going, remembering how Alistair, Leliana and Wynne had often written his surname out when they were teaching him how to read it.

_I am Theron Mahariel._

His writing was still best described as a scrawl, but it was definitely legible. Far from elegant, but he found that he no longer cared by now about how much it looked like an educated noble’s handwriting. It was his own style, the shakiness and childlike quality of his untrained hand gradually fading the more time he patiently spent night after night seated at his desk with a quill in his hand and a slowly emptying inkwell, learning to write words by heart. His style developed as his control improved, until his writing looked as if it was indeed written by a mature elf the more he practiced his letters over the weeks and months after the duties of being Warden-Commander left him be for one evening and let him pretend he was still just an ordinary Dalish elf.

He had some favourite words that he liked to write over and over again, filling a whole page in with nothing but them until he grew sick of the sight of the word. _Halla_. _Bow_. _Lath_. Most words with at least one ‘s’ or ‘x’ in them. _Zevran_ , naturally, was another word Theron liked writing out until it filled the page, and he often tried to mimic the Antivan’s flourish of a signature every time. It wasn’t so much the way the words felt as he wrote them, but the images or feelings they sparked in his mind.

 _I can write_.

Seeing those three words down on paper solidified the pride in his chest. Theron sat for a moment in quiet contemplation, before he hurriedly reached for another blank piece of paper.

 

The next morning, a raven was released from Vigil Keep's rookery, bound for Antiva City with a letter tied to it’s leg.

_Dearest Crow_

_Guess what I can do now?_

_T._

**Author's Note:**

> I hope I'm not the only one who found the idea of Theron teaching himself to write adorable.  
> Constructive criticism on this piece, or any other pieces I've posted on here, would be much appreciated!


End file.
